Shooting a robot millions of miles from Earth and landing it on another planet is incredibly impressive and all, but it wasn't a just an aeronautical physics experiment. We went there to collect data. Now we've got some: the first color images from Mars Curiosity.

The image was taken by Curiosity's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera, and shows the north wall and rim of the Gale Crater. The image quality of photos from the rover will improve mightily in the next few weeks once the dust cover on its camera is removed, but this is plenty pretty for now. [NASA via Twitter]